The Political Significance of Social Identity: A Critique of Rawls’s Theory of Agency
Author(s)
Graham, Kevin M.
Abstract
In Political Liberalism, John Rawls argues that the conception of the person presupposed by his theory of justice is not a form of abstract individualism, as many critics charge. The author argues that the conception of the person that Rawls develops in Political Liberalism prevents his (Rawls’s) theory from identifying certain forms of injustice related to ethnicity, race, and gender. This is because it assumes (1) that members of all social groups need the same primary goods, (2) that primary goods may be treated uniformly as objects of individuals’ possession, and (3) that persons’ social identities are politically irrelevant.
